Then 18, Faella and his buddies would pack into their cars and travel to punk-rock concerts and clubs. Usually thrown out after slam-dancing in front of the stage, Faella said that's where skinheads began networking in the parking lot.

Being a skinhead made like-minded strangers instantly recognizable. It was an immediate brotherhood.

"It was insane back then. It was everywhere," Faella said, as he described the concert road trips and meeting other skinheads. "It didn't matter if you were like driving through a field in Arkansas, you would see another skinhead walking down the road … pull over and talk, and you would have an instant bond. It didn't matter where you went, you would see other kids like you."

In an interview with the Orlando Sentinel, the former leader of American Front spoke for the first time about the skinhead movement he joined more than 20 years earlier.

"I am not like a white racist, if you are using that term," said Faella, now 42. "I am a racialist, which means if you are African-American, you should be proud of what you are and promote your own people. Do something like the [Black] Panthers did when they first started out — I have nothing but respect for that. ...There are some dark things they did also, but every coin has two sides."

Ricardo Ramirez Buxeda, Orlando Sentinel

Patricia Faella and her husband Marcus Faella talk in a courtroom at the Osceola County Courthouse during a Sept. 14, 2012. They were among 14 American Front members arrested in an FBI sweep several months earlier.

Patricia Faella and her husband Marcus Faella talk in a courtroom at the Osceola County Courthouse during a Sept. 14, 2012. They were among 14 American Front members arrested in an FBI sweep several months earlier. (Ricardo Ramirez Buxeda, Orlando Sentinel)

Living then in Melbourne, Faella said his interest in the white-supremacy movement began with increasing animosity and fighting between blacks and whites at the local schools.

By the mid-1990s, Faella had joined with David Lynch, leader of the Florida-based Aryan Unity Coalition, to defend white high-school students along the Treasure Coast. Faella said the group stepped up at the request of parents, staging walkouts for white students in response to the schools' not doing anything about the violence.

'Call to violent action'

For nearly two decades, Faella and Lynch stayed in touch building a network of white supremacists and organizing the rebirth of the American Front on both coasts.

Marcus Faella, head of the neo-Nazi American Front, was sentenced to six months in jail today for teaching firearms and hand-to-hand combat skills to followers preparing for an anticipated race war.

Marcus Faella, head of the neo-Nazi American Front, was sentenced to six months in jail today for teaching firearms and hand-to-hand combat skills to followers preparing for an anticipated race war.

Becoming one of the most controversial leaders of the white-power movement, Lynch was slain in California in 2011. After his death, Faella rose to prominence among skinheads and became the American Front's state leader.

By this time, Faella was already being watched by the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force in what would become Florida's largest domestic-terrorism prosecution.

In May 2012, Faella and his wife, Patricia, were among the 14 American Front members arrested and accused of preparing for a race war. The arrests drew international attention to Holopaw, a small Osceola County community where American Front members conducted firearms training at Faella's home. A search confiscated about 20 firearms, including AK-47s and a sniper rifle with a night-vision telescopic sight, records show.

Though Faella initially faced life in prison, the case charging him with leading a well-armed gang preparing for war against blacks and Jews fell apart last year. Convicted in September on lesser charges, Faella served three months in jail and was home for Christmas.

Faella has broken all ties with American Front and is appealing his conviction, according to attorney Augustus Sol Invictus, who is representing Faella in his appeal.

"The success of the appeal would signal to the government — especially the Office of the State Attorney for the Ninth Judicial Circuit — that it cannot prosecute American citizens for what they believe," Invictus wrote to the Sentinel.

Of the 14 members arrested in the FBI's May 2012 sweep, all charges were dropped against 11 of the members. Besides Faella, the other two accepted plea bargains, with three years in prison as the most severe sentence.

The state of Florida's prosecution of Faella was not about his racial views but was about preventing violence, said Prosecutor Sarah Hatch, who tried the case against Faella.

"Sadly, any cause, even if well-intentioned, can be twisted into a call for violence," Hatch said. "Mr. Faella and the American Front organization's ideology was imbued with a culture of violence, which led to a call for members of his organization to engage in violent action and start a riot. It was his call to violent action, not his underlying views, that crossed the line and violated the law."

American Front: Now, then

The arrests of Faella and his followers destroyed the American Front in Florida even though the case against them fell apart, according to Mark Pitcavage, head of research for the Anti-Defamation League.

The American Front's board of directors dissolved its corporate charter Nov. 10, the day Faella was sentenced.

One of the oldest and better-known U.S. skinhead groups, American Front was founded in the 1980s but no longer exists except in smaller, rival factions. Though Faella was prominent locally, he didn't have the national recognition that Lynch did, Pitcavage said.

But the skinhead movement remains relatively robust, he said.

"By in large, they have been holding their own," Pitcavage said. "They're not growing, but we're not see a sign of decline."

Florida ranks second in the U.S. with 58 known hate groups, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. California is first with 77, and Texas is third with 57.

Other white-supremacist groups that exist in Florida include factions of the Ku Klux Klan, Stormfront and Confederate Hammerskins.

'There are some scumbags'

Faella spent the last 16 years living in rural, eastern Osceola County next to Bull Creek Wildlife Management Area.

It's where, according to trial testimony, Faella began organizing the American Front in Central Florida.

Skinheads from as far away as Canada would visit his Holopaw home. Target practice with AK-47s and other firearms was common. Members met for barbecues in the yard under a pole barn with open sides where photos showed a noose hanging from a rafter.

"There's a lot of people that were reaching out to us because they don't have families or they don't belong anywhere," Faella said. "Coming to you, and you see they have problems, and you try to be there for them. … It's like, 'Get a job. Get educated. Try to build a life for yourself. Do something. Be someone.' That's what we're always trying to promote."

Those who joined American Front included convicted racists.

"I can't say, 'No, we are all sparkling citizens, and everybody is innocent of everything.' There are some scumbags out there who associate and affiliate with different groups, and when they're found out they're ejected," said Faella, who has a white-power "Blood and Honor" tattoo covering his neck. "There are like the jokes and racial slurs — it happens. It's just like any other neighborhood. It happens."

A fourth-generation Italian-American, Faella doesn't find it ironic that he devoted himself to racial pride or had a noose — a symbol of lynching — hanging in his pole barn.

Faella's great-grandparents were part of the largest foreign immigration when 5 million Italians arrived from the late 1870s and to the 1920s. Widespread discrimination and violence followed, including one of the largest lynchings in U.S. history when nine Italian men were killed in 1891 in New Orleans after being acquitted in the murder of the city's police chief, according to multiple accounts.

"It happens to everybody. Everybody goes through it," said Faella. "It happens to any group that comes over in any amount of numbers and takes jobs from people. Every ethnicity does go through it."

Posters found on Faella's home computers during a court-approved search warrant included one of a masked man carrying an assault rifle standing below a body hanging by the neck from a telephone pole. Another titled "Because Racial Survival Is Never On The Ballot" showed masked American Front members armed with assault rifles and a Molotov cocktail.

Faella testified during his trial that the images were draft copies and never circulated.

Much different life

Faella, a commercial painter by trade, continues to live with his wife on 20 acres near Bull Creek.

But it's a much different life.

He's now a felon, so all the guns have been removed from their property. And all of his ties to American Front have been severed, as part of his sentencing.

While waiting for appellate judges to review his conviction, Faella is serving two years of community control with 24-hour electronic monitoring to be followed by 10 years of probation.

And he's sure he has an image problem.

"You know, they look at me and think, 'That guy wants to throw people in ovens,'" he said. "And that couldn't be further from the truth."

What he wants is to be understood.

"Basically it is the message: Be proud of who you are no matter what nationality, what ethnicity, what race you are. Promote it [but] not at the expense of other people," he said. "So I hopefully would like to be in five years acquitted of these false charges and maybe like starting something like the European-American equivalent of the NAACP."